During the course of a golf swing, the club shaft is under a load and is subject to often significant deflection and torsional rotation. Few have recognized that this deflection and rotation, albeit on a much smaller scale, also happens during the course of a putting stroke, particularly as the head weight of putter heads increases. As used herein, “stability” of a shaft refers to how the toe and heel of the club face track one another through the stroke. The relative volatility of the velocity and acceleration of the toe and heel of the club face pre-impact, at impact, and post-impact can be significantly improved. Controlling the face angle and face twist results in a tighter departure angle range for the ball leaving the face and significantly improves the likelihood of the ball leaving the face at an angle closer to the target line, which in the case of putters improves the likelihood of making a putt.
While driver, fairway metal, and hybrid shafts have evolved over the past 30 plus years, from steel tubes to a variety of often complex composite shafts, putter shafts have not evolved at pace. No serious golfer trusts their driver to perform optimally with an inexpensive steel shaft. Why would any serious golfer, if they had a better option, trust their putter to work best with a cheap steel shaft? After all, a putter is used almost twice as much as any other club in the bag. Most conventional putter shafts are simply steel pipes (wrapped and welded construction) containing little to no engineered aspects tailored to the unique situation of putting. They are narrow in the tip and taper to a larger diameter at the butt-end for gripping purposes, and consequently exhibit inherent weakness in the lower portion of the shaft. Ultimately, the impetus for steel shafts continued preeminence is cost: steel shafts are used by putter manufacturers primarily because they are so cheap.
The present invention provides significant advances tailored to putter shafts, but are also applicable to all golf shafts.